The Moon-Bunny

Author's Note: This story is inspired by a story that was posted on Reddit.com/r/LetsNotMeet, a thread dedicated to creepy stories. It was deleted shortly thereafter, and since I couldn't stop thinking about it since I had read it, I felt as though the Internet should be able to experience a story with a similar but original gist.

For most of my life, my only mental image of the moon-bunny was off-white, slightly checkered skin. Moonlight revealed only its crown, also covered in fine, raised lines that formed the criss-cross patterns that I imagined to cover its whole body if shadows hadn’t concealed it. Two long, tendril-like ears on the sides of it’s head wafted gently with the torrents of air that poured through the opened window, also causing the skin sagging from its arms to drift alongside. The willowy, shadow-eclipsed silhouette remained poised in a mantis-like position, as though ready to escape as inconspicuously as it arrived.

Well, that’s what my parents claim, anyway. That’s how most of the crude, crayon portraits depicted of this creature that I called “the moon-bunny.” According to them, I started asking to sleep with them because a “scary bunny who came out of the sky and into my window.” After obliging me with an inspection (looking underneath my bed and out of my window), my mother dubbed my room monster-free and said that it was “probably just a friendly alien” and nothing to worry about. That’s right, folks: an adult told me that aliens were nothing to worry about, an assumption that would later be shattered by science fiction and horror films. Getting tired of accommodating my paranoia, my parents encouraged me to befriend the moon-bunny and even told me that it might show me its space ship if we became close enough. Soon thereafter, the moon-bunny shapeshifted from unwanted extraterrestrial presence to space bff in seconds flat. My parents often heard me “talking” to the moon-bunny at night, but didn’t want to disrupt my creative flow, as I was drawing and developing the talent that would come to color my future.

Like a little stereotypical 3 year-old, I would ramble on about my nightly hang-out sessions with the moon-bunny. I claimed that I was right about the moon-bunny coming from the sky because “I saw her fly into my room.” (The moon-bunny must have revealed its gender identity at some point.) Thinking that I had just forged my first imaginary friendship, my parents told me to invite the moon-bunny to dinner, mostly just for kicks and to see what my imagination could do, probably to photograph or record it like they did for a living. The next morning, I reported directly to the table as my robe-clad parents drank coffee and read the newspaper.

Spill-O Fantasizes an Apocalypse Avoided

One afternoon, God came back,armed with fire.He said He was a gardener,come to prune us away.Looking up from the waitresses’ asses,Spill-O saw Him coming.“Your destructionwill only be the measure of Your neglect,”Spill-O said, consumed but not burned by the fire.“So mind Your reputation and get lost.”God paused.His countenancerestrained the swarmsof terrible angels.“The stamp of Your semblanceis nearly too much for us to carry,” Spill-O said.“But like You, we are not completely mad.And You are only as redeemable as us.”God withdrew to his cosmic shyness.Remorse had been teaching Himslowly, since Noah.And it’s not done teaching.In the Long Island Sound,a sailor heard the thunder sayCan’t live with them, can’t live without them.Spill-O exhaled and hopedthat the waitress wouldn’t charge himfor a refill on his diet soda.

The Fog, Decay, Your Love

The FogLike the fog, the haze of your wordspromises more solid beginnings.But are the lights that shinethrough the haze of your narcotic eyeshope,or delusion?DecayOn winter mornings, decay seemsa far-off nightmare.The sun calls it out.But there are only a few hours till dusk.Your Love

Your love is like the branch of a tree in Fall.It is forever reaching out to me.But is its agonizing spread too futile to return me to your arms?

My Utmost

Author's Note: The protagonist of this story is intended to be autistic. Historical accuracy prevents it from being explicitly acknowledged within the text of the story but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people will fight tooth and nail to avoid admitting a character is autistic unless it's made explicit.

The grandfather clock down the hall chimed twice, then a third, upwards-inflected time, indicating 45 minutes past the hour. Jacinta Devlin had her pocket watch on the desk right in front of her but she always counted out the chimes anyway. They felt right. As long as she could hear them, the world was on schedule. Forty-five past eight meant it was time for Jacinta to make collections for Mr. Rosenzweig. She eased her topcoat off the back of the chair and pulled it on without buttoning it, putting on her dark gray felt snap-brim as she got up. Mr. Rosenzweig wasn’t sure about her wearing a suit, but Jacinta was insistent. The men who worked for him wore suits so it made no sense not to. Jacinta was 22 years old, plump and about 5 and a half feet tall, with red curls she kept a medium length. One of Mr. Rosenzweig’s associates, thinking he was being very generous indeed, once told her that if she lost some weight she’d be the spit of Ethel Clayton. Jacinta hadn’t been familiar with the idiom, to which the man explained, as if talking to a simpleton, that he meant she’d look like her, to which Jacinta asked why the hell she’d want to look like Ethel Clayton. “Well, because she’s a damn pretty one,” the man had said. Jacinta had shrugged. “So am I.” And that was the end of that.

TRANSCONTAMERICA

United we stumble, an angry man in a pink shirt in Group 3 who the gate agent restrains when he attacks women, two women, one old with a worn movie star sadness and palsy the other young, doughy looking, whose face I can’t remember because it doesn’t look like a face yet rather its dough and playdough and cookie batter and possibly—possibly—will become a woman when baked at high temperatures. Economy, non-stop flight 391 to San Francisco with gas stops in Minneapolis and, also, Denver for crying out loud. There was a thin crisp dusting of snow on the runway in Minneapolis, and the air was dry. Whatever the diner in terminal C of Newark says, they do not have the best home fries in the world. In Denver I thought of my sister, how we don’t know each other but are almost the same, are almost Tony with boobs, are almost making money. Almost the same. Except this plane is broken, why will you fly us in it? Except, there are divers in the fuel tank. Scuba the exotic fumes spilled in the Gulf. Except, we are already seven hours late. Except, please, please god, just make sense. Except, there are no exceptions no empty seats on other flights no other way no other way no way home for Christmas. When did I become the one waiting for the rest of the house to wake up? Old, old, old, and needing gas stops. #Unreal #Christmas #Travel #Airlines #Economy #HomeforChristmas #Poetry #Flying

Show and Tell

pre-9/11 version of herself whose internet still dialedsat criss-cross-applesauce on the oriental rugplaying not with Barbies but with matches.Potentially an act of arson small enough for the dollhouse,but it stayed safely stashed in the upstairs atticshrouded in a black plastic bag.The useless wisps of smoke curled into the coveted hourglassshape that’s meaningless when you’reasingledigit.When Mom(my) and Dad(dy) got home,the slacker babysitter would have no explanationfor the ashy smudges, shoulders shrugging off the post-snack activitylike graham cracker crumbs.No blood (to be absorbed like a secret), no foul (odor to be Secret-masked).For the meantime, all was left unadulterated.

Flawed

Embrace this poem’s awkward verse.Its obvious structure and tame wording is unsatisfying.Accept this poem with its graceless line breaksand unsophisticated syntax as you would a child who is struggling.Hug close this poem, slowed by tired metaphors,as you’d hold a bewildered grandmother, nearly gone.And when there is no dramatic moment, no strength in meterand its current weakens, wanders,sit by it and patiently listen to its hollow voice.Praise it in its failing.It isn’t pretty enough.Like that girlYou and your friends made fun of,Called names, threw stones at,Who married you and blessed youWith forgiveness.This poem must be forgiven.It is not to be fixed.

Buddhist in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska

Karma put him herefor the purpose of being blownaway in a wind.The house he lives in, the waythe grass in his yard grows andhis vegetables struggle, each of hisneighbors, all placed as ifwith tweezers.His patience is tested weekly,

at the supermarket, watchingthese people fill every inchof their sweat suits andshopping cartswith all that processed food.On the church lawns,the families hold signs,God Hates Faggots.He thinks about standing with themholding a sign,God Loves Everybody Equally.Maybe that’s whyhe’s in Scottsbluff, Nebraska,minus 6 degrees yesterday -to help him strengthen hispractice of universal loveand compassion.His Russian born wife, in herlast year of residency,thinks about internal medicine,and the external generatorthat warms the truck’s engine blockso it doesn’t crack fromthese extreme temperaturesso it can get her to the hospital for7 more months.Then they will drive the hellout of here, to Yuba City California,64 degrees today,where she will join a family practice andhe will have a Buddhist community,and they will trade in this truckfor a convertible, and their hairwill blow free.

Toad's Fugue

(after Paul Celan)Toad’s Fugue Sweat the milk in the morning whether you sleep whether you drink mine is yours in sleep Have a margarita and I will blitz your hair

To fight in a grave in an error in the leakage of a spilled dance Sweat in the milk and drink it in the morning

I will not be sleeping at home I will die in the night in a Dutch boat in an ear in an ear Night in the eyes All is beaming Sweat, milk, and morningWe drink in the house Margaritas Mr. Spilled Milk Dead Toad Dead Toad Sleeping in a dagger in the lute in the tomb of broken daliasSweat in the milk tonight with a toad Ditch the land of the morgueIs it loud? It drifts a bundle of kuegel pastries in the grave of thirty Mister Toads dying golden ducks dying asanas Shulamith!

Diana Norma Szokolyai, co-director of the Cambridge Writers' Workshop (CWW) wrote this poem after Jessica Reidy's performance of the Paul Celan poem, "Todes Fugue" during the CWW's Yoga and Writing Retreat in Verderonne, 2013. Mis/translation is a creative writing invention exercise during which a poem is performed aloud in a "foreign" language that none of the participants can speak. The participants than provide a "mis/translation" of the performed poem based entirely on the feel and sound of the words.